Early Video Games And The Art Of Personal Engagement
Posted: April 7th, 2009 | Author: miconian | Filed under: Geeking It Old School | Tags: 80s, football, mattel, video game | Comments
When I was in fifth grade, circa 1982, I had one of the hand-held football games pictured above. It was about the size of two iPhones. The game was played by using your thumb to maneuver a player from one end of the field to the other. The opponent’s players were LEDs that were lit up. The user’s player was an LED that was lit up a little bit brighter.
Moving the avatar down meant that the current LED would go out, and the LED just below it would come on. Avoiding the opponents meant maneuvering around them before they had the chance to tackle you. Whether or not they tackled you while you were adjacent to them was purely a function of how long you lingered on any particular spot. The whole screen represented only ten yards; you had move through it ten times in order to run the length of the field.
I loved it. Never was I bothered that the players were represented by LEDs. In fact, the disparity between real football and the little plastic device with the panel of red lights was the whole appeal of the activity. Being good at the game didn’t indicate dexterity or a knowledge of football. It indicated the ability to think abstractly, to imagine a whole world where there wasn’t one. How long could you stare at that little screen before two adjacent lights started to look like nothing more than two adjacent lights? When that happened, you’d hesitate. And that’s when you’d get tackled.
The game had a beautiful simplicity to it that I miss. Playing games like that was a lot like reading a book; part of the fun is your own necessary engagement. The imaginary world waits at the edge of your imagination, ready to be created. But if you don’t embrace it, then it’s nothing.
I wonder if it’s even possible to make a video game today that offers the user that kind of challenge. And I can’t help wonder if, somewhere along the road, the philosophy of game design went from “Wouldn’t it be cool to challenge the user to suppose that these LEDs were football players?” to “Wouldn’t it be cool to show the user how well we can animate?”
image by dcJohn
I have one of those! I take it with me on plane trips (sound off, of course); I play both sides, and when I get tired of that, I see how far I can run up the score. Much fun.
MrMoonPie: Have you had it since you were a kid, or did you find it on eBay or something? I wish I still had mine.
I remember those things. I rarely played with them, because it was like 10 years later and we already had the atari 2600. Who wants to play with little red leds when you had full color graphics on the atari! ;-)